MMOs and game design

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gevlon

I’m absolutely fascinated by Gevlon’s most recent project – he’s starting a new Alliance guild on one of the most faction-imbalanced PvP servers in EU WoW. There’s almost no alliance infrastructure there at all right now; dead auction house, virtually no raiding, no chance to hold Wintergrasp.

But he’s thinking on a grander scale than just building a guild in a wasteland, he wants to try to single-handedly change the faction balance to something more equitable. That’s going to involve getting more alliance players in, getting horde players to switch or move out, revitalising the local economy, sorting out some kind of realm pride and cooperation …. it may even be one of the biggest challenges possible in a server-based MMO.

Now admittedly, using twixt as your inspiration may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he’s taking a no holds barred approach to the situation.

He will be facing many of the same problems that people/ government genuinely do face in urban regeneration (albeit without the misery caused by grinding poverty when jobs dry up). It makes me wonder what virtual communities might have to teach people in the real world. For example, in a post today he comments that there will be no guild bank and he discourages people from trading items in guild chat, because by forcing them to use the auction house it helps the economy more (i.e. better to give your cash to a local business than just swap goods, even if it might be a little more expensive for you personally.)

How would you go about trying to regenerate a ‘dead’ faction or a dying server? Would you try to get some ‘celebrity’ guilds to get in on the action and transfer over/ make an alt guild? More publicity on bigger blogs or official sites? Forcing the other faction out by creative griefing?

And if you’re interested in taking part, he’s taking all classes and specs. All you need is … I dunno really .. a commitment to annoying the horde and rebuilding a dead server, or a love of a challenge, or being with a bunch of people who want to revitalise world PvP at really poor odds.